Nintendo makes $200 Wii official, no change to pack-ins

It's official: starting on September 27 the Wii will be sold for $200 standard …

No more scans from leaked ads from various retailers, no more analysts endlessly speculating, no more "will it or won't it" conversation in the forum: Nintendo has finally made the Nintendo Wii price drop official. Starting on September 27, the Wii hardware will be available for $199.99. The package will continue to include a Wiimote, a nunchuk, and Wii Sports.

Nintendo also gave up the launch dates of two of its biggest titles for 2009: New Super Mario Bros. will be released on November 15, with Wii Fit Plus coming to retail on October 4.

Nintendo, of course, expects the price drop to widen The Wii's appeal. “Wii has reached more video game players than any game system before because it attracts everyone—both men and women, and people of all ages,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience."

While both the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS have been handily outselling their competition in the United States, the Wii has been faltering in sales in the last few months, with the Xbox 360 coming dangerously close to catching up to the system's sales on a per-month basis. With Sony's newfound momentum it was also possible that Sony may come close to touching Nintendo's sales in the next month or so if trends continued, a contingency that was seen as unthinkable a few short months ago.

So how do you make sure you stay on top of the pack? Drop the price $50. This move is the latest in a long line of poorly hidden pricing announcements in the gaming industry, and should do a lot to make sure the king of casual games and family appeal stays in the number-one slot. Even after Microsoft's $50 mail-in rebate, Nintendo will now remain $50 cheaper than the Elite, while now enjoying the same price as the 360 Arcade.

Even better, retail seems to have a handle on the supply issue, meaning that consumers who are finally pushed off the fence should be able to find plenty of hardware at their local retailers.

Take a look at what Microsoft sold this time last year, and what Nintendo sold. Microsoft is holding steady with some gain, and Nintendo is dropping like a brick. This should give the Big N a nice boost.

Respective to their performance last year, absolutely. MS is doing great. Nintendo is dropping. But what is Nintendo dropping to? Certainly we shouldn't expect even flat YOY with one of if not the best years of all time... In the scheme of things, MS it doesn't seem likely that Nintendo is going to drop below MS... Just below their own big numbers of last year.

My Wii is still in my closet gathering dust. I think the market is saturated at this point and the gimmick got old real fast. I like the system, I really do, but there are no games that cater to my particular brand of gaming and thats sad. I bought a PS3 instead to see if I have better luck there.

Originally posted by pentium 3:So you don't find the Xbox 360 or PS3 enjoyable? There are no true 1080 games for those systems ;-)

BS. WipeOut HD is all in 1080p. So is WipeOut Fury. Also, there are lots of the PSN games like Soldner-X: Himmelsturmer that are in true 1080p. More and more games will be made in 1080p as time goes on when the devs learn how to monkey with the code.

As for the price drop for the Wii I m glad for it. My daughter has been bugging me for one all year long. Here comes a Wii Christmas!

“Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience."

-Nintendo says the lower price point will get more people to buy it. They're almost certainly correct - it's part of the law of supply and demand in economics.

Now would be an awesome time to republish early Wii titles, like Twilight Princess at a lower price. It's still going for 49€, which I find absolutely ridiculous for an older game. My personal pain spot for buying games is 30€, over which I will very very rarely buy anything, even if it comes with a free something.

Of course, exceptions can be made for Wii Fit, sports^2 and peripherals. That's just fluff ^_^ And such very nice fluff it is.

One thing to remember, is that Nintendo never sold wii at a loss. PS3 and X360 were, and probably still are sold at a hefty loss.

The Wii as a hardware is almost identical to GameCube, with a slight clockspeed increase and somewhat better graphics, and support for wireless controllers.

With no hardware changes and huge volumes, they're still making not just a little but a lot of profit even from the hardware. In that price point, and with those sales numbers, I'd find it reasonable to do a hardware upgrade to something modern that could at least do HD. Skimping out and selling something that hardware-wise could have been made EIGHT YEARS ago is pretty insulting to the customer.

And I'm not saying that the Wii is a bad experience - on the contrary. The controller scheme is brilliant and there are some pretty interesting games. I'm just saying that the hardware is long due for a real upgrade and getting on par or at least close to the competition.

Originally posted by Banquo:I`d rather they concentrate on releasing some decent games. I haven`t turned on my Wii in about 6 months.

Even that is largely hardware-dependent. Many of the ps3-x0 -titles are simply so heavy hw-wise that they would be extremely hard to port to the Wii, and they would look like crap compared to either HD console. Why would anyone port a clearly inferior version of the game to another console.

Originally posted by TSTM:Even that is largely hardware-dependent. Many of the ps3-x0 -titles are simply so heavy hw-wise that they would be extremely hard to port to the Wii, and they would look like crap compared to either HD console. Why would anyone port a clearly inferior version of the game to another console.

Sales? There are hordes of Wiis out there. The people that own them might just buy your game if it's good. But, clearly, the goal isn't to sell games, it's to push polys.

LOL if you believe for one second that most publishers wouldn't sell their grandmother if they would believe it to sell well on the Wii you are really deluded. People that buy games that do well on PS360 (big non-cute ActionBlockbusters) do not buy them for the Wii.

Why should they they have a 360 or PS3. This gen games, consoles and gamers are divided more than ever before.

Originally posted by wallinbl:Sales? There are hordes of Wiis out there. The people that own them might just buy your game if it's good. But, clearly, the goal isn't to sell games, it's to push polys.

quote:

Originally posted by JPan:LOL if you believe for one second that most publishers wouldn't sell their grandmother if they would believe it to sell well on the Wii you are really deluded.

Oh, I do think that the publishers most definitely would sell their grandmother if they thought the game would sell - but that's the thing, it wouldn't. They'd be making an inferior game (compared to the other two platforms - even decent AI can be hard to accomplish with the Wii processor) if they didn't completely redesign the game itself. The Wii is not a polygon-pushing machine and it cannot compete with fancy graphics and money-poured-in-blockbuster-titles. What the Wii has to compete with, is gameplay and being different, unique, non-portable.

My point is: the Wii could be both. With the volumes they're pushing and the revenues they're making, there's no reason why the Wii couldn't be best of both worlds. A powerful pixel-pushing monster and at the same time offering the possibility of unique gameplay using the Wii controller, Wii fit, what have you. And to top it all off, the Wii has a reasonably good reputation, I bet there's a lot of people who'd put out the cash right now for a Wii Extreme or whatever the console could be.

What the Wii has to compete with, is gameplay and being different, unique, non-portable.

the problem is being unique is not easy, hell the Wii is doing well in

- minigames- railshooters- classic Nintendo games that would do well on any system and do not utilize the Wiimote very well- music and rythm games that do well on all systems - Wii Fit as truly innovative approach to cross gaming and fitness devices.

it was innovative and unique in the beginning but what is true about the system definitely is not true for the games that do well anymore. Tell me the difference between Rabbits2 and Rabbits1.The Wii is doing well when the motion controls are of a benefit , the PS360 do well when graphics and online gaming are an advantage: Hardly a surprise.

quote:

the Wii could be both.

You mean a Wii HD I suppose? But you should know the problem with creating a new console generation. But we will see, we will soon have three motion enabled consoles and at least two with HD graphics.

It will be interesting to see how that works out. On the one hand adding a motion controller is a bit lame. On the other hand publishers could port their Wii games easily because the Ps360 are so much more powerful.

(Although I would like to know if you can walk with the Playstation Motion Controller. Without Nunjuck it will be useless for everything but some minigames and Wii Tennis. (Although I want Wii Tennis on my PS3. Best party game ever.)

Nice. Like the other systems the Wii should see a sales boost, and probably get the people who are on the fence on the other systems to purchase. There are some really good games out now or coming out (Metroid Trilogy, Wii Sports Resort, NSMB etc.). I also agree that they should start releasing some first party older games at a cheaper price. I have yet to play Twilight princess because the copies here in Canada are still for the most part the same damn price.

Originally posted by JPan:(Although I would like to know if you can walk with the Playstation Motion Controller. Without Nunjuck it will be useless for everything but some minigames and Wii Tennis. (Although I want Wii Tennis on my PS3. Best party game ever.)

More than that, because the Elite (and other XBox 360s) will ultimately get the RRoD in its lifetime, usually after the warranty expires. Throw in the $75 Microsoft charges for its complete lack of fixing this issue, and we're talking $125 saved.

Not a Nintendo fanboy, just calling it as I see it from XBox 360 owners themselves.

What's missing from this article, though, is that it's one thing to *own* the console, but quite another to actually have these "both men and women, and people of all ages" *playing* with it.

Something Microsoft can easily toot its horn about given how many people still play with this console.

Originally posted by JPan:(Although I would like to know if you can walk with the Playstation Motion Controller. Without Nunjuck it will be useless for everything but some minigames and Wii Tennis. (Although I want Wii Tennis on my PS3. Best party game ever.)

Motion controller in one hand, dual shock 3 in the other.

that is less than optimal setup. One hand would not be able to do very much on that controller and the weight to one side would make holding it awkward. The nunchuck is really a brilliant solution to that problem. The controller itself as a whole limits itself to only so many buttons. Until we can better track motion, more complicated control games on the Wii will be a huge hurdle, because we only have so many buttons to use, and motion doesn't always work well or fit.

On the topic of sales compared to last year. Microsoft is catching up, or is it that Nintendo's ridiculous sales per month are just dropping down into the normal range? Even if Microsoft catches up in sales it won't be gaining any reasonable ground. And if the Wii stops selling in huge quantities people think that the "fad" (which it certainly is not, I love my Wii) is over. But really its just start to selling as poorly (in the sense that its only now selling that many) as the other 2. Judgement on to how much the Wii has changed the industry and its lasting power cannot be made until the next-gen is out and we see where each console maker goes, and how the development studios respond.

When it first came out it was in big demand and constantly in short supply, with people having to get up at 5am to stand in line, in the mere hope of getting one. They upped the production and it was still in short supply.

Then, one day, there was no longer a shortage. They finally caught up with demand. If they were smart they cut back on production because all the people who had to have one no matter what now owned one, and what were left were the causual buyers--if they see it on the shelf, maybe they'll pick one up. It has been 'on the shelf' (no waiting in line) for about a year now, so I'm guessing all the casual buyers have also already bought one.

In other words, I don't see the Wii selling that much anymore. As has been said, its reached the saturation point. Time to come out with a new console.